It’s a fair cop and robbers

E is for Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

Don Siegel’s treatment, with a customarily terse Clint Eastwood, grips like a vice and puts Eastwood’s capers as Dirty Harry in the shade.

F is for France

Many of the best American hard-boiled crime authors initially found an audience on Gallic shores, hence the number of first-class adaptations of pulp classics by the likes of Godard, Truffaut, Tavernier and Alain Corneau.

G is for Gun Crazy (1949)

A forerunner of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, Joseph H. Lewis’s tale of love on the run is a delirious pleasure with an exquisitely shot bank heist, an erotic love affair with guns and a femme fatale straight out of the devil’s handbook.

H is for Dashiell Hammett

The only crime writer whose life has also been filmed as a thriller (by Wim Wenders), the author of The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man has generally been well served by the movies, although his masterpiece Red Harvest has so far defied attempts to adapt it.

I is for I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

A gritty jail-break film that paved the way for modern cult classics such as Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, and injected a strong sense of moral conscience into the Hollywood pot, this was directed by Mervyn LeRoy, who had created Little Caesar in 1931.

J is for Jack the Ripper

Another crime icon, albeit of an evil nature, who can’t be kept away from the silver screen. From Hitchcock’s The Lodger to the more recent From Hell, with Johnny Depp, the Whitechapel serial killer has always cut a more dashing image in films than many worthy sleuths themselves.

K is for The Killing (1956)

An adaptation of a Lionel White novel by Stanley Kubrick, this race heist thriller has seldom been improved on in depicting the meticulous work that is the business of crime and the subtle interactions between criminals under pressure.

L is for Liebestraum (1991)

Mike Figgis’s much underrated thriller about steel buildings, sexual jealousy, family secrets and the wheels of fate is a highly personal choice. But the force of obsession is a theme that draws me in.

M is for Miller’s Crossing (1990)

This expansive, autumnal depiction of Prohibition years gang warfare is straight out of Hammett. Violent, touching and a bravura example of the possible complexities of the crime film.

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N is for The Night of the Hunter (1955)

The only film directed by Charles Laughton (from a splendid novel by the now forgotten Davis Grubb), this could as easily qualify for an A-Z of horror flicks. Mitchum at his most sinister, kids in peril, the atmosphere of a primeval swamp: nightmare stuff.

O is for On the Waterfront (1954)

Best known for catapulting the young Marlon Brando into the public eye, it’s a powerful depiction of crime at the lowest end of society as workers, union officials, politicians and crooked cops battle it out for control of the New York docks. Elia Kazan’s film is theatrical and mannered, but still packs a mean punch.

P is for Point Blank (1967)

The first and still the best adaptation of Richard Stark’s (alias Donald E. Westlake) Parker series, in which John Boorman turned Lee Marvin into a cold-blooded and unforgettable killing machine on the path of vengeance. Hasn’t aged a bit.

Q is for Quentin Tarantino

The director has injected much-needed new blood into crime movies through a clever assimilation of genre tropes, attitudes and a reverence for its rules. His films are more than parodies, blending modernity with pathos to create something new and invigorating.

R is for Ripley

Patricia Highsmith’s wonderfully amoral, if seductive, character keeps on fascinating film-makers. From Alain Delon in René Clement’s Plein Soleil to Matt Damon in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley, encompassing Bruno Ganz and John Malkovich, he is the everyday criminal among us and a constant reminder of the road not taken.

S is for Georges Simenon

The prolific Belgian crime author is not only the creator of Inspector Maigret, but of literally hundreds of dark-hued and subtle psychological novels about ordinary evil. Superbly adapted by Melville, Tavernier, Chabrol, Patrice Leconte and countless others, they invariably grace the screen with a touch of quality.

T is for They Drive by Night (1940)

Like John Ford, Raoul Walsh is one of the great journeymen Hollywood film directors, but one with a knack for crime movies (White Heat, High Sierra). George Raft and Bogart are the Fabrini brothers, struggling to make a living as truckers, while crooks, misguided women and enemies conspire against them. A classic of the small man against corruption.

U is for Underworld (1927)

A wonderful proto-noir depiction of Chicago Mob rule and gangland melodrama from the émigré director Josef von Sternberg and penned by Ben Hecht, who won an Oscar for his adaptation, this has the unique perspective of being shot from the gangster’s point of view. German directors transplanted to Hollywood laid the foundations of the noir genre.

V is for Vertigo (1958)

The iconic tale of amour fou and crime and one of Hitchcock’s most notable films. Everything clicked: James Stewart’s placid but obstinate sleuth, Bernard Herrmann’s dizzying score, Kim Novak’s double role as femme fatale extraordinaire, Robert Burks’s lavish colour cinematography. Still compelling and mysterious.

W is for Cornell Woolrich

Now remembered only by the die-hard buffs, but one of crime writing’s unique authors, whose stories of coincidence and compulsive behaviour are a goldmine for filmmakers (Truffaut and Hitchcock were both fans).

X, Y and Z are for all those who didn’t fit into such an artificial alphabet, so here’s to Sherlock Holmes, Badlands, Martin Scorsese, Fritz Lang, Francis Ford Coppola, Chinatown, Edward G. Robinson, Howard Hawks, David Goodis, John Huston, Psycho, Michael Mann and others, without whom crime films would be so much duller.



CRIME CLICHÉS